So, I’d read about these cellphone novels in Japan and thought that it was completely insane to consider writing a novel on a phone. And then I was waiting for the train, my palm pilot was in the bottom of my bag with produce from the farmer’s market burying it, and I thought, “Why not?”

So, I pulled the phone out and started writing. I use the word loosely, you understand. ¹ Anyway, if you are interested in being part of my experiment, drop me a line with your cell number and I will periodically text you an installment in “The Case of the White Phoenix Feather.”

I have to warn you that these will be extremely sporadic installments and that all of them will end with a cliff-hanger. I’ll start sending them randomly, next week. You may get one a week, or one a day. I should also warn you that I’m writing with no idea of where this is going.

Here’s the first line.

Without preamble, Virginia leaned across the spotless white tablecloth and smiled. “When I said the ninjas were no match for us, I meant it. Lou will be back with the White Phoenix Feather before the dessert course. Now quit gaping and finish your soup.”

Edited to add: This will be a short story, not a novel. I’m not that crazy.

Cherie Priest recommended the furminator on her blog a while back. We’ve been dealing with our two very sheddy cats and keep considering shaving them.

So today, I went out and bought a furminator. My heavens. The thing works exactly as promised. Plus you get the added bonus of getting to say, “Careful, or I’ll furminate you,” or “I furminated Marlowe earlier,” or “Not just now, I’m furminating.”

I mean… really. How can you not love that.

SFWA is doing a serious overhaul of the website in an effort to bring it into the twenty-first century. Interested in helping make it user friendly? Then this job might be for you.

Edited to add: This position is for an editor, not a webmaster or designer. You would be dealing with the content of the site, but we have someone else to do the heavy lifting on the design.

Estimated time required: 15 – 25 hours per month (Initially more, but workload would vary seasonally.)

SFWA Content Editor/Webstaff Administrator

Job Description:
The person in this position would perform the following tasks:
1. Advise the Board on the future direction of SFWA web presence, set priorities for SFWA web presence, and assist in recruiting volunteers as needed.
2. Gather, organize, and provide content to the SFWA webmaster.
3. Organize webstaff volunteers, determine staffing priorities, assign jobs, and maintain communication within the webstaff. Develop a plan for updating sfwa.org in a timely manner.
4. Serve as liaison between the SFWA webmaster and webstaff and the Forum and Bulletin editors, Executive Director, Other SFWA committee chairs as directed by the President. Coordinate duties with the webmaster.

Requirements:
Qualified candidates should have excellent organization and written communication skills, as well as an understanding of current web technology. Understanding budgetary organization is helpful. Membership in SFWA is required.

Benefits: Resume worthy credit, close contact with established SF professionals, help shape the face of SFWA. Stipend offered. Interested parties should submit resumes to sfwavolunteer@gmail.com no later than June 15, 2008.

Please pass this along to anyone that you think might be interested. If you have any questions, please feel free to ask.

A 6.1 earthquake hit Southern Iceland today. We’ve talked with some of our friends and everyone seems to be fine. Since Iceland is a geologically unstable island, they tend to be more architecturally prepared than we do. Even so, all the residents in Hveragerdi ((Hveragerdi has the hot river where we spent summer solstice.)) and Selfoss were told not to go back into their homes until authorities are sure that they are safe.

Our friend, Daddi, said that he was at the studio packing up for an expo here and that he and Hannis felt it, saw the lights shaking and headed outside. The quake lasted long enough that they got all the way outside before the tremors stopped. He also said that the weather is perfect today, so that most people are just pitching tents outside and planning on camping while things get sorted out. ((Given where they live, they don’t have to worry about trees falling on them.))

If you click through you can watch footage of the quake from different parts of the country, including parliament. Does business stop? No. I love the Icelandic spirit.

And I’m so grateful that everyone is okay.

This is a viral ad. Why am I showing it to you? It uses Brains, one of the characters from the Thunderbirds, and combines puppetry, CGI and motion capture to good effect. What I love about it is that, though are a few things that a marionette can’t do, ((The very fast spins, in particular, but otherwise, most of it is possible)) it doesn’t violate the rules badly and it takes advantage of the fact that it’s puppet by doing things that a person simply can’t.

But what’s even better is the behind the scenes footage. It showcases the work of Ronnie LeDrew (who did the giant marionette Levi’s ad) as the head puppeteer on this one.

Spotted at PuppetVision.

Today was, if not lazy, at least filled with dull work. I got home from that around seven and took the evening off. Granted, I had stuff to get done, like, say, the last of the fifty bajillion edits in Shimmer. But it’s been so long since Rob and I were both home in the evening that taking some leisure time seemed mandatory.

He’s washing the dishes now, so I’m going to go rub his back. Have I told you about that? It’s been our deal since shortly after we met. Whoever does the dishes gets their back rubbed. I’m going to go pamper my husband a little.

Some time ago, I read Andrea Kail’s Soft, like a Rabbit in Fantasy Magazine and loved it. At the moment it has eight, count them, 8, recommendations for a Nebula. Its eligibility expires at the end of this month. If you are an active SFWA member, I highly recommend reading this story in the next couple of days.

The interactive Nebula Award Report is up and running again, so there’s no excuse.

My flight was further delayed, but that was just fine. I sat down and this charming gentleman settled into the seat next to mine. I noticed that his reading material was Naomi Mitchison’s Travel Light, from Small Beer Press. Naturally, this merited comment, as it made it almost certain that he was also coming from WisCon.

Indeed. My seatmate was Ron Serdiuk from Pulp Fiction Press out of Australia. We knew so many people in common that it was almost comic that we hadn’t met before. The flight seemed almost too short, so we shared a cab into the city.

I must say, I was not expecting the flight home to be one of the highlights of the trip, but it was.

The next highlight happened at home. My beloved husband had picked up season three of Battlestar Galactica. And Chinese food. Mmm…

My flight to NYC is delayed. First from weather. Then from maintenance.

Yes. Yes, I did run into someone in the airport this time, too. The woman I sat next to on the flight out from New York. Not nearly as exciting, but we’d had a nice coversation on the plane so I was happy to run into her again. We exchanged cards.

I managed to finish this story at WisCon. Yay! It’s 5800 words of urban fantasy.

It’s in a password protected post, but it’s the usual password. Don’t know what that is? Drop me a line and I’ll tell ya.

And here’s the teaser.

Half-consciously, Kim put a hand up to cover her new nose ring. She knew it pissed her parents off no end that she could tolerate cold iron and they couldn’t, not like there was that much iron in a nose ring.

It still made her break out sometimes, but didn’t burn her like it did them. “Kimberly Anne Smith,” Mom’s voice caught her in the foyer as surely as if she’d been called by her true name. “I’ve been worried sick. Do you know what time it is?”

“11:49.” Kim dropped her hand and turned to face Mom, her Doc Martens making a satisfactory clomping sound on the hardwood floor. “I’m here. Home before midnight. No one with me.” Sometimes she thought about bringing friends home to show them what her parents really looked like after their glamour dropped.

I’ve added WisCon to my must-do conventions. You can tell that I liked it because I came to bed too late to write a post every single night I was here. The panels were, on the whole, good. There were times when I wanted them to dig a little deeper, but the subject matter was interesting and not topics that one normally sees at cons.

So a funny thing happened on my way to Wiscon. I mentioned that my flight was oversold and I volunteered to go on a later flight, right? The airline gave me a food voucher so I wandered over to the nearest kiosk. As I was standing in line, a woman said, “Mary Robinette Kowal!”

I turned, in some surprise. She looked familiar, but I couldn’t immediately place her so I cleverly said, “Um… yes!”

“I’m [editor]. I just had lunch with your agent.”

My jaw dropped. She’d spotted my name on my luggage tag as we were standing in line. And this, my friends, is a good reason to have a distinctive name.

We realize that we’d actually met at World Fantasy last year and ridden back on the same train. This time we did not have the same destination, so running into her was totally random. She was on her way with her boyfriend to spend the weekend with his family. And then she said, “Your manuscript is one of the ones in my bag. It’s sort of Jane Austeny, isn’t it?”

“Jane Austen with magic!” I said.

“What could go wrong with that combination?”

“Well, lots of things go wrong. Chaos ensues. And then matrimony.”

She laughed.

So the lessons learned today are:

1. Volunteer to be bumped
2. Distinctive name is good.
3. Have the elevator pitch ready.

I mean, now I’ve got a free round-trip ticket from the airline and had the bonus of making a connection with an editor right before she reads my manuscript. I think that’s worth the price of being late to WisCon.

Or perhaps I will arrive in Madison later. The flight was oversold and they were offering a free round-trip ticket to volunteers so, I’m going to hang out in the airport and catch the 11:00 flight. Not sure when I get into Madison, but my first panel at WisCon isn’t until tomorrow and I’m sure I’ll be there long before that. ((Knock on wood))

This should be some good writing time.

Not that I have anything terribly exciting to report. I just wanted you to know where I am. I’m supposed to arrive in Madison at 9:08.